ISSUE28

ISSUE ONE : NOSTALGIA

ISSUE ONE

NOSTALGIA

"The difference between reality and imagination wasn't ever clear to me at all."
—David Lynch

A Letter

It might seem slightly strange, that for our first issue, we decided to look back instead of forward. But in recalling those hazy, romantic dreamscapes of our past, we have found that this is not looking back — this is remembering. This is where memory and imagination meet. This is where our dreams and reality intersect and combine, bringing memories — real or imagined — to life. This, dear readers, is nostalgia.

Colors, sounds and smells begin to arrange themselves in front of me: a group of teenagers in 1974 playing records to each other over the phone; a man in a slim grey suit, running to catch a train in India. These, of course, are not my own memories, but that’s what nostalgia allows: the ability to long for not only my past, but places I’ve never visited and people I’ve never met, or sometimes, have never even existed. Nostalgia is not of something that once was, but of something that could have been. Realism always gives way to fantasy.

In this issue we continually ask ourselves: Who are the people who present a world that doesn’t exist, only to make it real? And who are the people who present the world just as it is, only to render it fiction?

A note on Issue28: Nostalgia and its ties with our obsessive need to archive (and the internet’s ability to let us do so), can serve as a metaphor for the site itself. Issue28 exists somewhere between the permanency of the compelling artists that are invited to speak to the issues of our time, and yet the pieces they create for Issue28 will only exist in the present, disappearing as each new theme is introduced from month to month.

Are our experiences — those lived and of the things we’ve read, watched and interacted with — worth the same weight in the present if we cannot archive them, catalogue them away neatly so that their inherent newness can give way to that familiar and comforting feeling of the old?

Issue28 is, above all, a dialogue. And as you can see we will most likely be left with more questions than answers each month. But we welcome the abstract, for it continues to let us to make believe in real life.

– Aliyah Shamsher, Editor-in-Chief, February 1, 2014

'Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.'

- Evelyn Waugh

Cover image and right by Paolo Roversi, courtesy of Fotografiska

Youth

Ch. 1

Ch. 1 : Youth

The First Time

Nirrimi Firebrace

Innocence. Beauty. Health. Energy. Recklessness. Imagination.

The older we become, the more we romanticize and fetishize these vital traits of our youth. The body has never been so supple and the mind, never quite as elastic. In retrospect, it is a fleeting thing, so far removed from adulthood as to seem like a construct of the mind rather than lived experience.

The teenage dream, it’s been coined. Well, “everybody’s youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”* It is a period of intense transformation, an urgent blend of naiveté and newfound inhibition played out in awkward exploits and volatile emotions. I am wistful for and embarrassed of my youth—who isn’t?

But nothing seems to last as long as the present; my teenage years were colored by a kind of sustained playacting, my pretending to be something or someone else—like a child does, really, except that my innocence was cycling in and out of self-awareness.

Longing would be an accurate word to describe it. It’s what lends nostalgia its gravity and, at the same time, its marvelous and illusory nature. That can be said of youth, too—not because what transpired was unreal, but because emotions may not be fully recognized for what they are. One’s lack of experience is always telling.

*From F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

'I tell myself I’ll never get to be twenty years old again. I skip down streets and share cheerful hellos to strangers, I listen with an open heart and I sing aloud to the songs playing in my head. Alba and I sit near a patch of flowers by the sidewalk for a while just watching the insects that live there, no need to be anywhere but there. I just be the person I want to be, and it was that simple all along. Simple, but not effortless.'

- Nirrimi

I can’t pretend that I was ever as cognizant as Nirrimi is at her age. At twenty years old, she has already established herself as a prodigious fashion photographer and worldly traveller. Her intrigue, though, stretches beyond her talent.

She occupies a very serious and challenging liminal space, pressed up against the threshold of not just adulthood, but parenthood. At sixteen, Nirrimi ran away from home to be with the boy who is now her husband. She is a girl and a wife. The year before last, their daughter was born. She is a child and a mother—all this, entirely of her own volition.

Her words remind us that youth, however revered and simulated after the fact, is a pure state of mind. And while we’re in the throes of it—of youth, of the present moment, ultimately—nothing hurts or fulfills us as intensely as it does when we experience it for the first time. ♥

By Dixie Gong

“I obsessively documented life so much that when I reminisce now it is more a collection of images, films and diary entries than true memories.” Picking up a camera at the age of thirteen, Nirrimi Firebrace was one of the youngest fashion photographers signed to an agency. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in the Blue Mountains.

All images by Nirrimi Firebrace

La Collectionneuse

Ch. 2

'I was dreading going back. Missing school is like a death wish.'

- Lick the Star

Images by Petra Collins from "The Teenage Gaze," Quote from Sofia Coppola's 1998 film Lick the Star

Ch. 2 : La Collectionneuse

The Teenage Experience

Sofia Coppola x Petra Collins

This whole thing with Yearbook, it’s like, everybody is in this big hurry to make this book to supposedly remember what happened. But it’s not even what really happened, it’s what everybody thinks was supposed to happen. Because if you made a book about what really happened, it would be a really upsetting book.*

“—was anyone ever so young?” Joan Didion asks in her 1967 seminal piece Goodbye To All That. Fittingly, youth plays an important role in this issue, as nostalgia is so tied to the unfiltered, heightened emotions of our adolescence.

When you’re young, feeling is a constant state of being. A fact not lost on filmmaker Sofia Coppola and photographer Petra Collins, who both continually explore (and beautifully illustrate) the boredom, isolation and recklessness of youth.

And yet, for all the vulnerability, earnestness and sincerity of emotions that seemingly emanates through their work, there is a lingering question of whether or not this world actually exists. Did it ever? Are these honest accounts or merely manufactured teenage landscapes set against the iconography of our teenage selves?

*Angela Chase, My So-Called Life, 1994

Both Coppola and Collins have capitalized on portraying the experience of youth with an ever-revolving parade of restless souls, languishing away in their suburban milieu. The faces change, but the themes remain the same.

However, youth, much like memory, can only exist in the abstract. For it is the passage of time that creates meaning where there was once none, and finds the extraordinary in the mundane. Our power to reconstruct our teenage selves—add and subtract details, start at one point, only to jump ahead ten paces and start all over again—is what allows them to become those idealized melancholic worlds of our adolescence, flawlessly reflected back at us by Coppola and Collins.

But perhaps that’s not the point.

There is something to be said for the way Coppola and Collins are able to masterfully execute a mood—manufactured or not—time and time again. And although filmed in 1998 (black and white screen-caps above), Lick the Star’s dialogue still resonates, and the parallels that can be drawn between the film and Collins’s images, photographed almost two decades later, point to an enduring authenticity that can only be found in our youth, and will always find its way through the artificial.

Maybe Angela had it right all along. ♥

By Aliyah Shamsher

Sofia Coppola is a screenwriter, director and producer based in Los Angeles and Paris. Petra Collins is a photographer and artist based in Toronto, Canada. View Collins solo exhibition Discharge (on now until April 27) at Capricious 88.

All images by Petra Collins with screen-caps and quotes from Sofia Coppola's 1998 film Lick the Star

'...These kinds of images address the overall nostalgia you feel when you’re young — throughout being a teenager, it feels nostalgic because you’re already looking at it in a retrospective, you’re told that these moments are fleeting, that the memories last forever, and these sorts of experiences, alongside their portrayals in the media, sort of come to define you. So there is this desire, and like, fantasy, in already looking back at yourself and how you want to seem, how you’ll remember, how it will compare, even while you’re living it.'

- Petra Collins via Alldayeveryday

Objects

Ch. 3

Ch. 3 : Objects

Retrieve Every Last Thing

Sara Cwynar

“I keep everything,” says Sara Cwynar.

Lost, forgotten and disused objects are her livelihood: ancient pink and orange hair curlers, electrical cords, stock photos from bygone eras, spools of yarn and glossy artificial plants take hold in her studio among countless other found miscellany. A self-professed hoarder, Cwynar battles against the anxiety of loss by giving new value to objects that would otherwise be considered worthless—it is your junk that comprises her artfully arranged still lifes. Your childhood toys and necessities, your random debris that was once carefully kept and treasured, now color coordinated fragments of something whole: a photograph.

“Maybe it finds a new value and maybe it doesn’t,” Cwynar says. “It’s almost biological. Things resurface and then die again and then come back; this life of an object that has nothing to do with the actual object but rather with its initial role in the world, and then its role in my totally constructed world.”

What do you remember of your past? What do you miss? Can you trace it to a tangible thing? This inexact science of conjuring memory through materiality. Stuffed animals, your grandfather’s watch, VHS tapes. A life reduced to an interminable trail of objects bought and thrown away, or lost, or taken. Brittle sea shells, your first camera, Le Petit Prince. When the object is gone, you forget and then you retrieve, but only through the bittersweet lens of nostalgia.

Color Studies (Grey)

What is it about collecting, saving, and re-purposing all these manifold objects for your photography that satisfies you so?

I think my favorite part about it is creating this external archive or version of yourself that exists outside you, a tangible record of experience that you can see and hold. And also the idea of organizing, having total control over my set of materials. Photography has always been sort of a way of organizing the world, especially near its beginnings there was a feeling that maybe the entire world could be captured and recorded through photography. I am really trying to parse through this with my work, how I can reorganize the world under my own terms and then present it through photography.

In a previous interview, you wrote, “Certainly there is an intense nostalgia involved in hoarding and collecting, which could be a whole other discussion – the idea of making a physical manifestation of yourself through the things and images you save, some sort of external record that will live on, of never being able to throw something away. That is a deeply nostalgic, existential thing.” Can you expand upon this line of thought for me? Are we the sum of all the things that we own?

I just think that this impulse to save and collect, the fact that certain people need to hang onto things, the trouble with letting things go is related to some sort of deeper anxiety about death, about parting with things and people, about letting so much go as we pass through life. You really see this with hoarders, the psychological state that something terrible will happen if they part with any of their objects. Christian Boltanski speaks of this impulse really nicely. He says “preserving oneself whole, keeping a trace of all the moments of our lives, all the objects that have surrounded us, everything we’ve said and what’s been said around us, that’s my goal. The task is vast, and my means are frail. Why didn’t I start before?

Color Studies (Blue)

'…But the effort still to be made is great, and so many years will be spent searching, studying, classifying, before my life is secured, carefully arranged and labeled in a safe place, secure against theft, fire and nuclear war, from whence it will be possible to take it out and assemble it any point, and that, being thus assured of never dying, I may, finally, rest.'

- Christian Boltanski

Everything In The Studio (Destroyed)

“The arrangement is the meaning,” wrote Joan Didion. If the objects you collect are proof of someone else’s lived experiences, what do they become in your carefully arranged still lifes?

I think the objects become more of a reflection of the general set of objects that many people (in North America) have in their lives. This personal collection of junk people make by accident. I also hope that the junk can be transformed into art in a way—elevated to a different status of object, achieving the status of art.

You’re standing in your studio, surveying all the items you’ve gathered for a big installation/photograph. Do you ever feel stifled by the excess of objects surrounding you and all the memories they contain? Are there times when you almost want to throw everything out and start anew?

Yes! I actually did a project called “Everything in the Studio, Destroyed” where I did just that. I got totally overwhelmed by all the stuff and did an installation where I moved it all into the gallery and then threw it all away at the end. It was hard, I had a lot of anxiety about parting with the objects, some of which I’d been saving for years, but in the end it was nice to start new and I re-accumulated very, very quickly! I also used to work out of my apartment for most of my life so I would just be living in the things constantly. That was both good for the work and totally overwhelming for my life! ♥

By DG

Born in Vancouver, based in New York, Sara Cwynar is a mixed-media artist, photographer and graphic designer. Pre-order Cwynar’s second book Kitsch Encyclopedia now.

Color Studies (Green) / All images courtesy of Sara Cwynar

Remembrance

Ch. 4

'Longing for the sea. Too curious to worry about not dipping our hands in tide pools, microcosms of life in salt water. Grey skies and mountains like a flat painting, gradient blues. The throaty whine of seagulls, pavement, dirty sand, driftwood. The fragrant hush of Douglas firs, towering and ancient. The sensation of cool, damp air pressing all around. Grandma’s brown house situated above a high driveway, always looking like it was melting into the forest. The smell of ointment, tiger balm, and strange plant roots in her kitchen. I often spied slender deer on the front lawn timidly licking bark for salt.'

- DG

'The magical hum of a dim sum restaurant. The clattering of china and smooth plastic chopsticks, the stilted roll of trolleys bearing steamed buns and grease-slicked noodles, strange nests of fried dough, gelatinous orbs of rice, sweet red bean and sesame. Large families with kicking children and grandparents, always. The constant chatter, speaking almost yelling over each other to pass this, order that, steam rising from a thousand little dishes. Ginger ale and jasmine tea, the taste of which never changes no matter the restaurant. This hum always makes me drowsy and happy. '

- Memories of My Childhood by DG

Handpainted watercolours by Emily Piggford; Wallpapers designed by Johnathan Fong

Imagination

Ch. 5

Ch. 5 : Imagination

Melancholia

Albert Moya

For 23-year old Catalan-born, New York-based filmmaker Albert Moya, it is the fiction of everyday life that inspires: “I know more or less how real life works, but I need fiction in it, even if that fiction is telling a real life story with small alterations to it. Life is less boring if we have stories to tell.”

In his critically acclaimed short film American Autumn (released last year), Moya looked to 1970s New York, re-imagining the atmospheric dinner parties of our collective past: “My mind was full of images of people walking wrapped in big trench coats through central park, surrounded by mustard, camel and maroon.”

Looking to portray the past in an imaginative way, Moya decided to work with an ensemble cast of children, aged seven to twelve, instead of adults: “Reality feeds off of a magic or surrealist concept. This is what allows you to understand a new point of view.”

In this exclusive video for Issue28, Moya worked with American Autumn actor Zeljko Tomic, capturing the moment between awake and dreaming. For it is here, Moya believes, where we can catch a fleeting glimpse of our youth again.

“It’s that moment when the real and surreal are the same. And even though we know we can never go back because our dreams and nightmares now mean something else entirely… there is still something in that moment. You feel both melancholic of a time gone by and yet, super awake and alive.” ♥

By AS

Albert Moya is filmmaker based in New York City and his first feature short film is American Autumn.

'It’s the autobiography of something that didn’t happen. I remember dreaming it up, dreaming of acting on it as a 12-year-old. It’s a memory of a fantasy.'

- Wes Anderson on the making of Moonrise Kingdom via The Wrap

Images by Paolo Roversi, courtesy of Fotografiska

Abstraction

Ch. 6

Ch. 6 : Abstraction

My Heart is Yours Forever (A Prequel to Hotel Congress)

Deborah Turbeville x Nadia Litz

A Preface

Tucson, Arizona. 2013. Summer in the desert, and I’m wearing a Vanessa Seward for A.P.C. silk dress in a phone booth in the lobby of the Hotel Congress. A hotel famous for its role in the capture of American Bank robber John Dillinger. I’m in a one-person phone booth, trapped like a chicken in an egg farm with Francis*, calling the man I once thought was my soulmate—let’s call him South Dakota Jimmy. I’m in love with Francis, but I am married to someone else and I’m calling South Dakota Jimmy.

What I’m about to do is make an admission. I’m about to tell you the truth. (Although as a disclaimer, my English professor told me that all unreliable narrators start with this kind of declaration). This is a personal essay, like the kind Lena Dunham and David Sedaris write in The New Yorker**, based on memories and facts (or neither). Whatever the case, it is what eventually lead me back to Hotel Congress in Tucson, Arizona in the summer of 2013.

Above: Deborah Turbeville Self-Portrait; Right: Stigmata: Isabella at Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1977; Below: Parco, 1964

A Story

Toronto, Canada. 2002. Winter in the tundra.

I have a British boyfriend with a fancy name: Elliot. Elliot’s from Bournemouth, England and his name isn’t actually Elliot. It’s much nicer than Elliot. I confess he isn’t from Bournemouth either but he is from England and it is 2002 and he is my boyfriend.

And I am a Canadian (which means that I am not really anything specific).

I’m with British Elliot who has hair like a member of the esoteric noughties Brit pop band The Bluetones. (For the record, yes, I know I could have just said Oasis.) I’m with Elliot and I cheat on him for the first time. My memory serves like Novak Djokovic*** so I’d say it’s not the first time I’ve cheated on a boyfriend in my life, but it is the first time I cheat on Elliot. It’s with South Dakota Jimmy. His name isn’t Jimmy though. It’s much nicer than Jimmy. Jimmy’s whole name is a famous person’s name—like Clark Gable or Apple Paltrow—which is useful because Jimmy is actually famous. A famous musician. More so now than in 2002, but not much more and only on account of some recent hip hop collaborations and his much more famous girlfriend.

I’m in a burnt sienna 4-door Neon with Manitoba license plates. I would have described the color of the car as “coquelicot,” but I’m sure Neon had their reasons. I’m driving to Philadelphia with Lila (as an aside, Lila’s real name isn’t nearly as nice as the pseudonym I kindly just gave her). We’re driving from Toronto to Philadelphia to see South Dakota Jimmy’s band perform. Months earlier, British Elliot had tried repeatedly to get me to like Jimmy’s band. When Elliot would come to visit me from Bournemouth he would play Jimmy’s band for me non-stop on my stereo while I tried to put my hair in the perfect side ponytail in the bathroom of my one room loft near Chinatown. Chinatown, Toronto. Which isn’t at all the same as Chinatown the movie or Chinatown, New York. Chinatown Toronto is just Chinese food.

I can’t recall what I was wearing on the blizzardy drive to Jimmy’s show in Philadelphia in November of 2002. But, I do remember what I was wearing at Jimmy’s show that took 14 hours to get to. I wore a light silver Club Monaco slip dress that recalled 90’s Kate Moss (although I looked more like Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star in it). The very same Club Monaco slip dress that I had my first torrid yet parching affair in comes up, with me in it, in a Google search of my name because I wore it to a film premiere once.

I like that no one knows that but me.

I wore the dress without a bra or underwear. I had great nude leather slouchy vintage boots that were a size 8, even though I’m a 6.5. I topped off my look with a junior sized white rabbit real fur coat with small rip in its left shoulder. I should add that I wore Lancôme Juicy Tubes lip gloss in a defunct color that I used to buy on eBay for years after it had been discontinued. My hair was in a side ponytail.

The show was great.

After the show, Lila and I perched on stools in an adjoining bar to the venue. You could smoke in bars then, so we did. All night. Lila wanted something fun to happen because we had driven 14 hours for something fun to happen (and because Lila wasn’t very cute). I had a boyfriend. British Elliot. So I was content to go back to the Holiday Inn we booked (last minute). But Lila had other plans. Lila wanted to go to the second floor of the venue, a wasteland of promise, whose entrance had been protected all night by a bouncer who looked like Wayne Brady.

All I remember of the second floor, which is to say every thing, was that I turned to a girl we’ll call Jenny (because her name was Jenny and girls named Jenny don’t get pseudonyms) and asked her if she had a cigarette. Jenny got a mischievous look in her eyes that I’ll never forget. “You want a cigarette? Just wait right here.” A minute later, Lila stopped mid-sentence and said, “Jimmy Fakelastname is walking towards you with a cigarette. Jimmy Fakelastname is walking towards you with a cigarette…”

I turn my head and like from a movie, Jimmy is in front of me, holding a cigarette out for me. Our eyes meet like snowflakes hitting a car engine that has been running for a very, very long time.

In all living memory, I have never felt an impulse for true and lasting love based on nothing really real, quite like that. I submit, in fact, now that I’m recalling 1/8^th of the events that it was real with Jimmy. I said to Jimmy, “I drove 14 hours just to know you.” He said, “They’re kicking everyone out unless you have a wristband. Wait here. Don’t go anywhere. I’m getting you a wristband. Don’t leave.” I didn’t. For 11 years. ****

From that first moment with Jimmy, British Elliot and all my boyfriends were doomed.

That is until I met Francis and ended up one summer at the Hotel Congress with him.

—

*Francis’ real name is much nicer than Francis.

**Ok, perhaps more like an unsuccessful submission to “Lives” from The New York Times Magazine.

***Although Novak Djokovic is my favorite tennis player he isn’t actually known for his serve.

****11 years is a terribly unremarkable number for a remarkable love affair. Just over a decade but less than a quarter century? How shameful.

By Sofia (not her real name)

Shot on location at the real Hotel Congress in Tucson, Arizona, this two-hander nostalgic hotel-affair film dissects the nature of a love affair that begins as an affair. Co-directed by Michel Kandinsky and also starring Phillip Riccio, Hotel Congress will be released by Search Engine in March, 2014.

Above: From Bathhouse series, New York, Vogue, 1975; Left: What Happened in Versailles?, Vogue, 1980

An Addendum

To first understand Hotel Congress, you must first understand that it begins with a personal story. I wanted to remember something that was bit tawdry or debased in a sweet and romantic way. Had I just wrote the facts of the experience down, it would sound awful on paper. And yet, when I look back, I still view this experience as very romantic, sweet and actually very true. There are also so many stories of cheating that lead to an inability to be with the person in the end. I—and my creative cohorts—sort of wanted to make a story of ‘cheating’ that actually was hopeful for the couple in the end… because good things can sometimes come from ‘immoral’ activities. Sometimes.

That being said, nothing I create is ever diary-entry-verbatim. Looking at how we tell stories is an integral part of Hotel Congress, and for the two characters as well. I do believe that storytelling is the ultimate safety net. A girlfriend or a wife is a safety net too. So is an alter ego. So is a character I might play in a movie. Or a film I might make. Fiction always attempts to get to something true, which is a dichotomy I find infinitely fascinating. ♥

By Nadia Litz (her real name)

Blurring the boundaries between fashion image and art object, prolific American photographer Deborah Turbeville (July 6, 1932 – October 24, 2013) continues to be unmatched in her ability to transform the mundane into the strangely magical. Nadia Litz is a director, producer and writer based in Toronto, Canada. Her film, Hotel Congress, will be released this month.

Above: Parco, 1964; Right: From Wallflower, 1978; All images by Deborah Turbeville courtesy of Staley-Wise Gallery

Reality

Ch. 7

Ch. 7 : Reality

The Time Traveler

Robert Polidori

“Why bother painting or trying to create imaginary worlds? I approach photography as a tool for knowledge acquisition; it uncovers grains of truth…

…In the end, life will always reveal itself.”

Photographer Robert Polidori is all too familiar with our yearning for those soft, evocative images that allow us to re-structure and synthesize our collective past. In an almost instinctive retort, Polidori insists on methodically catapulting his audience into the actualities of our shared histories in such finite detail that there is barely any room left for our minds to wander and imagine what might have been.

I would argue here that Polidori’s body of work is a constant exploration of our longing for the dream-like state that memory provides, if only in the sense that the artist never allows us to enter into it. Having spent the majority of his artistic career photographing the room, Polidori insists it acts as both a catalyst and metaphor for states of being. By capturing its decay in minute detail, the artist seeks to reveal not the past, but the complexities of our present realities.

“I don’t re-enact. I witness,” says Polidori. By presenting places exactly how they are, not as we remember them, all at once Polidori reminds us that life will always reveal itself, even if it renders itself fiction. ♥

By AS

Above: Boiserie detail and surveillance camera in the Grand Cabinet de Madame Victoire, r.-d-c, corps central, Château de Versailles, France, 2007; Left: Señora Faxas Residence #1, Miramar, Havana, Cuba, 1997

'The mind has a much easier time remembering what stands out versus the banal. Because of this, memory becomes a place for re-structuring, composing, synthesizing important moments that are woven together to become our history. To remember one thing, you must remember two things.'

- Robert Polidori

Samir Geagea Headquarters #1, Rue de Damas, Beirut, Lebanon, 1994

‘Camera means ‘room’ in Italian, so Camera Obscura literally means ‘dark room.’ There is something there, this idea of a room. The guts of a camera even look like a room. It’s a beautiful metaphor for what photography is.’

6328 North Miro Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. USA, 2005

'I’m extremely interested in the act restoration: to make something old, new again. But you can’t really go back, time keeps moving forward. It’s more of a layering. Layers upon layers as time passes.'

- Robert Polidori

Velours Frappé and Ladder, salles du XVIIe, r.-d-c., aile du Nord, Château de Versailles, France, 1985; Above: La Guarida Paladar, Restaurant Entrance, 318 Concordia, Centro Habana, Havana, Cuba, 1997

‘I don’t like to dwell too long in the dream-state, but I’m always partially submerged.’

Born in Montreal, Robert Polidori is one of the world’s most acclaimed photographers of human habitats and environments. His work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the L. A. County Museum of Art. He lives and works in New York.

Samir Geagea Headquarters #4, Rue de Damas, Beirut, Lebanon, 1994; Below: Portrait of Marat by David, r.-d-c., aile du Midi, Château de Versailles, France, 1985

Then & Now

Ch. 8

'In my life, I reference the past quite a bit. Particularly when it comes to how things were made. That could easily be perceived as nostalgia. However, it's not just aesthetics and objects we come across when we seek out craftsmanship—but it is humanity. That is in essence what my work revolves around—the human touch. That's why I hold craftsmanship so dear, it is the last bastion of hope for humanity in world that is so disconnected. '

- Waris Ahluwalia

Honey & Wax Booksellers

Ch. 8 : Then & Now

Of Conversation and Communication

with Waris Ahluwalia

When we first decided to embark on our journey through the depths of Nostalgia, one of the few people we hoped to speak to was Waris Ahluwalia. It seems fitting that we end our issue with he who continually champions the past through his many projects as a creator, actor and explorer. And yet, in our eyes, Waris has always been a man wholly of the present.

You’ll find weaved throughout our last chapter Waris’s thoughts on nostalgia and its ties to our rapid-fire Internet Age—paired with the objects and artisans he looks to champion in his newest venture, House of Waris RARE.

His words also inspired us to have a conversation of our own. Sharing their letters from childhood, Issue28’s Managing Editor Dixie Gong and actress and artist Emily Piggford gathered over dinner one evening in February to discuss the act of conversation via instantaneous communication. Asking, what does it allow? And, more importantly, what does it take away?

'The idea of keeping something to yourself, and in a way keeping some things sacred has completely vanished. Have our experiences happened if we haven't shared them? My views may seem pre-historic—especially as someone who still doesn't tweet, Instagram, Vine or even Snapchat. Ok—I will admit to the occasional sexting. But all too often it seems these moments are created just to be captured. Or even created for validation.'

- Waris Ahluwalia

Delfina Delettrez Stone Hand Bracelet

Emily: I kept a diary for most of my life. I had a written diary and a tape recorder. It was called My First Sony and I recorded a lot of stuff into there. So I felt like for posterity or something I was always recording, but it was all personal and nobody has seen it since. Then after that, because my mom was always telling me chatting is bad and that’s how you get kidnapped and killed, like on MSN and stuff like that, I was taught that all those things are untrustworthy. They’re all scams—to showcase yourself in the same way that you would in your diary—but for everybody else, like, this is what’s going on in my life, this is what’s happened today, right now.

Dixie: That was the beginning of chat rooms.

E: Yes, and Myspace! I almost forgot what it was called. But now we share everything publicly. I was actually thinking about when we wrote letters to each other, it’s still correspondence like we do now, except we put more time into writing the letters and there was more personality in the design. Whereas now the personality of your conversation is limited to emoticons, punctuation or the actual shape of the characters that you write on Facebook or Twitter. The structure is whitewashed by the platform you’re using. Whereas when you write a letter you choose the paper, you choose the pen color, you communicate more than just the words.

D: Yes!

E: But now we try to communicate as much as we can, but with more limitations on the method of communication.

D: Waris asks: “Have our experiences happened if we haven’t shared them? All too often it seems moments are created just to be captured. Or even created for validation.” When we used to correspond with all those letters, I think it was not so much for validation as it was to be open with each other. And to do that in such a way that allowed us to be creative at the same time. As much as it was about what I did today, or what happened recently in my life, it was just as exciting to think about what paper I was going to use. Or how I was going to mark it up, what collages I wanted to include in it, what gifts I wanted to send, just to give you this whole package.

E: It was more than just sharing facts or updating, it was like a storytelling opportunity and also a creative opportunity. And now I think with these various social networking platforms we find ways to be creative within them but it shows up in the humour of our writing or in the spelling.

D: And also what you’re doing. For many people now it’s never been more important to share every moment of what you’re doing, and if it’s something ‘cool’, then it’s worth being known about so that you appear cool to other people. That you’re in the know or you’re someone special. It is for our own validation.

E: I think the reason why we started to take pictures and tweet so much was because maybe we thought we were going to forget. But as soon as we do just that, our mind does let it go. The only thing is now you can revisit it because it’s catalogued in threads or pictures. But before we would just trust ourselves and our memory to hold onto what we thought was important—

D: —put it in a letter—

E: —put it in a letter, write it down, just remember it physically in our bodies for future conversation. And then if it wasn’t that significant it would be let go. But now, in the chance that we might think it’s interesting or that someone will think it’s cool, we do it just in case because it’s no skin off our back to take a picture in a second. I’m not very good at doing instant stuff though.

D: I love editing the photos; it’s a lot of fun to do. But I hate editing with people around me. It’s something I like to do in private. When you look at a group of people at a table eating and all of them are on their phone it’s just so unsettling. It’s so disconnected.

E: It seems so rude. And what’s funny is that you’re doing something instantly to share it with people that you care about, with your friends, while you’re ignoring the people that you care about… your friends, who are right there with you.

D: But I do catch myself doing it…

D: It’s so easy to post your thoughts and share articles online—and you get instant feedback. Knowing that though, I think it’s harder to be as candid when you automatically receive a wash of feedback that isn’t always going to be positive. On the one hand, social media gives people the chance to respond to something they don’t agree with, but it’s also just way too easy to hate things for no reason.

E: I also have this sense of timing. As soon as I receive some sort of challenging message, I feel like now the clock is ticking. It’s like playing chess. They make a move and hit the clock, you know? So I feel like I have to reply right away or they’re going to make a quick judgment about who I am and what I think. Whereas when you write a letter, it comes with time tacked onto it.

D: To communicate is to have this experience of talking to someone, sharing your ideas, getting feedback, giving your feedback. It’s a back and forth process made up of constant inquiry. But there is this idea that when you tweet, when you post something on Facebook or Instagram, it’s just a little “hello,” and nothing more. It’s not so much a dialogue as it is stating a fact and letting it float off into the ether. You get a response, and then it’s done with. How much follow up is there? How much research has gone into what you’re saying? News anchors sometimes rely on Twitter to give them the facts—but did they follow up on it? Was there a reporter in the field or are they actually relying on someone viewing the event from a TV and tweeting about it?

E: They regurgitate from non-credible resources on these platforms that are supposed to take more responsibility for the information that they’re sharing. Perhaps people don’t feel as accountable when they tweet something. But if you were standing outside, looking out at all the people that follow you on Twitter—for some people that’s like thousands of people—and you said something to them, I think you would probably choose your words a little more carefully. I think that because in the past it was either by letters or in person, we communicated less frequently than we do now.

D: Or on the phone.

E: Yeah, on the phone too, but you’d rarely have a quick phone call. If you did you would wait until a time of day that was optimal for everybody, like you don’t want to call over dinner, and you actually have a conversation. But now we can send notes so quickly that communication is occurring at a rapid rate but the content is slimmer because of that. And whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know. Maybe the same amount of information is being shared it’s just now spread out over a million texts versus one sleepover. And is that so bad?

When you tweet, it’s so quick, it’s so raw and factual that it leaves so much more room for assumption and imagination around the nature of the person. I’ve been tweeting at people who I have never seen before. I see their picture, but it might not be their actual picture. I have no idea what their voice sounds like, what sort of tone they use. All I have is this little fact in front of me. It’s not complete communication.

D: I’m caught between the idea that, on the one hand, you’re more afraid to be frank and share your complete thoughts because of the backlash that you could receive at a very fast rate. And yet, at the same time, because you can be anonymous online, and you have the ability to comment on so many different platforms, you can say whatever the hell you want. There’s these two opposing forms of communication that are at odds with each other. When you and I were writing letters to each other there was no one else who was ever going to see these but us. So we didn’t have to be afraid to share—

E: —because we know exactly who our audience is.

D: Each other. But at the same time because of that I think we were able to broaden our sense of compassion. It’s harder to do that now as a teenager who is faced with all this anonymous backlash.

E: Yeah and those people lashing out might not feel as much compassion because it’s just an avatar and a handle on a screen. They don’t see the person—it takes too much energy to imagine all of these people on the Internet.

'There is no denying nostalgia is a beautiful thing—many hours have I spent in the act of remembrance. Yet it is with the awareness that we should learn from our past, not hold onto it. Tomorrow comes too soon. By no means am I proposing my way of life as better, it just works for me. It has dawned on me that the future is here and I'm being left behind. Please send me a postcard.'

- Waris Ahluwalia

HOUSE of WARIS for Mrs. John L. Strong

E: The funny thing is, I don’t think Waris will be left behind. Do you feel like people need to constantly upgrade?

D: Not at all. I think when these platforms were first emerging, the idea that you could connect to all these strangers—that was when it was in its golden years, when it was just so new and sparkling and you were just realizing that you could have such a far reach. But now it’s come to the point where I’m pulling back again because I realize it’s too much. There’s too much to absorb, too many different apps I can use to organize my day, when I could just go about my day and not need any of these. And yet we are taking all this in because they’re being sold to us.

E: I hope what happens with any intelligent person or group of people is that when they are presented with something new and convenient or luxurious and plentiful, they will go for it and dive all in, and then at a certain point they’ll realize to use only what they need. It’s like a kid going into a candy store and getting so, so excited—eating a whole bunch of stuff—then barfing. And then he goes in again and is like, “I don’t want that to happen anymore, I’m going to just eat the three things I like. I don’t need all this stuff just because it’s here.” But we do often first need to roll around in the plenty. In everything that’s available to us and run to the farthest reaches before we can dial back and personalize it. It goes in phases. ♥

Since we were 13, Emily and I have exchanged notes, drawings, poems, rants, manifestos, music, movies and objects. Most of these were passed in school, with the occasional letter sent in the mail. In Victoria, British Columbia, the ocean is never more than a twenty-minute drive away in any direction, and from where I lived Emily was no more than fifteen. There were countless sleepovers, rumpled beds and shared dreams. Words are what we lived by, and continue to still. We could talk late into the night and never run out of things to pen to each other after the fact. When we parted for university, we continued on in our grand tradition. Emails are few, but letters and care packages clutter my home.

Technology has simplified the effort and art of communication. I never had Facebook before university, and now it is the domain of the (very) young and old. So are texting, Twitter, and Instagram. While these and every other digital platform have blasted the door for social networking wide open, the question of being able to relate beyond the screen remains. Does your compassion extend to a stranger sharing his woes on Reddit more than it does to the stranger sitting beside you on the subway? What if you spoke with your mouth, not your fingers, and simply said, “Hello”?

Technology allows us to hide. Compassion can’t be practiced when the fear of fast and widespread digital humiliation builds such a strong case against it. In the time before mass emails, texting and social media, Emily and I wrote with abandon, without outside influence and judgment. Even now, through this screen, we hope it encourages you to do the same. ♥

By DG

All image by Dixie Gong; Above: Serdar Gülgün Bronze Vessel

'I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.'

- Virginia Woolf

Image by Paolo Roversi, courtesy of Fotografiska

Last Words, March 12, 2014

Issue28 would like to thank all of our contributors for being a part of our inaugural issue. It is only through all of you that we are able to imagine, reflect and realize. Thank you for taking a leap of faith of with us and we look forward to the journey to come. As we close this issue, we leave you with some last (or is never-ending?) thoughts on nostalgia.

Most surprisingly, as we languish in the past, trying to pull apart our fantasies from the bits and pieces of our actual reality, we are left thinking only of the present. We have manipulated time so that the present will never again feel as authentic as the past. It no longer belongs to us; we are in a constant state of playing catch up as time moves forward at lightning speed. In turn, we crave the authentic, superimposing the familiar filter(s) of nostalgia to cope with our ever-changing environment. When do we start remembering, if we can now introduce the past before we’ve fully experienced the present?